


come the morning

by jonphaedrus



Series: i cannot seem to find my way home tonight [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Alcohol, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Face-Sitting, M/M, May/December Relationship, Mildly Tipsy Sex, Post-Canon, Rimming, hot dogging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-04 01:28:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13353645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: “Do you have some better idea of what I can do with my time, General?” Knoll meant it to be teasing, but it was only after he spoke that he realized they had reached empty residential halls, no guards, no chamberlains. They had left their friends at the guest quarters, and they were alone. Duessel paused, cocked his eyebrows, and looked back and forth to be sure the hall was empty. “It would have to be,” he continued, curling his fingers into the leathers beneath his armor, holding onto Duessel, letting his voice drop. He had meant it to be teasing. But. But. “Very engrossing.”





	come the morning

**Author's Note:**

> yeah knoll/duessel knocked me out and robbed me blind and forced my hand and i had to. i had to porn. i had to.
> 
> help.
> 
> takes place directly after the end of "my luck is so bad it can only get better"

The year Lyon was born, Vigarde had put away a hundred bottles of the Imperial vintage in the Grado Keep cellars. The majority of it, probably about sixty bottles, had been given as gifts to visiting dignitaries through the years. Two dozen had been destroyed in the earthquake. Of the rest, Knoll had given them away as bribes, sold a few to help replenish the treasury, and they now had twelve bottles left.

Between the delegations of Renais, Frelia, Rausten, and Jehenna, plus Amelia, Natasha, and a few other guests, there were now none left. Everyone was mildly tipsy, and the air of celebration—of the peace treaty, of ending negotiations, of Duessel’s pleasantly announced forthcoming retirement, of Amelia standing up and murmuring that she was engaged, and she and Franz would be wed in the new year—had pervaded the entire castle. The stones themselves nearly glowed.

Duessel had been drunk enough to cry a few tears when Amelia had said she would be wed, and when she’d asked him to walk her down the aisle, he burst into sobs. Knoll had taken one of Duessel’s hands in both of his and squeezed it tight, happy for him beyond words.

And now, the lot of their sprawling family sloshed and _happy_ (by some definition of the word, anyway) they had wound their way to sleep. Or, at least, to bed. “I may as well have gone up to the observatory tower,” Knoll said, draped against Duessel’s side. “It’s late enough now I could have made some observations.” Knoll hadn’t had much to drink, and Duessel had sobered up pretty fast, but they were both still pretending a little. It was a good excuse to lean into one another, Duessel’s arm over Knoll’s shoulders, Knoll’s arms around his waist. If anybody asked, they were just drunk.

Everybody knew, but still, Knoll was always frightened they would be found out. But who would truly care?

“The Imperial Mages don’t need you every night,” Duessel replied, after a time. “The stars will still be there tomorrow, Knoll. Our friends won’t.”

It was still strange, even now that he’d become used to it, after six years, to think of his having _friends_. For most of Knoll’s life, he’d been alone. He had not had anyone before Lyon, and then he’d joined Ephraim and Eirika, and he’d met Natasha, Amelia, Cormag and Duessel, and their many other companions. And now—and now. He had _friends_. He was part of a community. He had allies, support within and without Grado. People he could turn to.

“Yes,” he said at last. “I suppose you’re right.” Knoll was already thinking of what he would do, once the Empress was settled, coronated, a new council formed, who would take on the roles that would need filling. He would be the logical choice to be the head of it, to guide Grado into the new age. He didn’t want that. It would be better to leave and lets the sands of history wash his name away with time.

Maybe Duessel would, if he asked, not let Knoll go alone, but—no. No, he wouldn’t come with Knoll.

“I can hear you thinking, Knoll,” Duessel said, squeezing his shoulder. “Stop worrying, at least for the rest of the night. When you wake at dawn, then you can worry as much as you want.”

“Do you have some better idea of what I can do with my time, General?” Knoll meant it to be teasing, but it was only after he spoke that he realized they had reached empty residential halls, no guards, no chamberlains. They had left their friends at the guest quarters, and they were alone. Duessel paused, cocked his eyebrows, and looked back and forth to be sure the hall was empty. “It would have to be,” he continued, curling his fingers into the leathers beneath his armor, holding onto Duessel, letting his voice drop. He had meant it to be teasing. But. _But._ “ _Very_ engrossing.”

“I can think of something,” Duessel said, and Knoll met him in the middle when they kissed, leaning against him, ignoring the cool nudge of his breastplate against his chin.

“You should have taken your armor off earlier,” Knoll murmured, reaching up to tangle his fingers into Duessel’s grey hair. It was beginning to thin on top, but it was still thick enough to pull, to knot his fingers in. “This is hard.”

“Well, then,” Duessel replied, scraping Knoll’s chin with his beard, “We should do something about that.”

And then Duessel picked him up, and Knoll just laughed, sprawled in the General’s arms, boneless and pliable in his dishabille from the wine. “You barely weigh as much as my armor,” Duessel said. It wasn’t comfortable, given the other man was still _in_ said armor, but it was only for a few minutes, the door to Knoll’s rooms— _their_ rooms—but a few feet away. Knoll unlocked it and Duessel turned to step through, and then lost his way when Knoll pulled his face over again, kissed him, blunt nails digging into the back of his neck, fingers knotted in the fine hairs there. They lost more time when they finally got over the threshold of the bedroom, lost in one another, and, finally, Duessel dropped Knoll to the mattress, let him bounce.

A consummate knight, a General without peer—Duessel had been in the army nearly twice as long as Knoll had even _been alive_ , he knew how to get out of armor fast. By the time Knoll realized he was stripping, Duessel already had half of it off. “I’ll have to call a squire to oil that,” he murmured, more a reminder to himself than to Knoll, as he shucked his vambraces to the floor, bent over to unlace the backs of his greaves, and then then got no further on his boots when Knoll grabbed the collar of his undershirt and pulled him over onto the bed.

Duessel came willingly. For being the same height, he weighed twice what Knoll did, was twice as wide. Each of his biceps was large enough that Knoll couldn’t wrap his fingers all the way around, and he loved that about the other man, loved that Duessel could throw him around like a doll. He was powerful in one of the few ways Knoll wasn’t. Physically. For a man of his age, doubly so. There probably wasn’t a sixty year old in such good shape on the whole continent.

“My boots,” Duessel pointed out, as Knoll kicked off his own shoes, cloth scholar’s slippers, Duessel’s fingers finding the ties of his robes up the sides and pulling them loose so that they fell open, grabbed Knoll’s hipbone. His hands were scalding through the cloth of Knoll’s tunic and breeches, and he parted his legs for Duessel to kneel between them, pulled him closer, urged Duessel to trap him against the bedspread.

“You’ll figure something out,” Knoll replied. “Come here, I want you.” And he _did_. Perhaps it was the wine still in him, or perhaps it was the heady idea that they had succeeded at all their plans, but he _wanted_ Duessel, even more than usual. It wasn’t low cinders, it was a hot bright burn. He was hard already, as Duessel learned when he palmed between his thighs, huffed against Knoll’s mouth. Knoll wanted him, wanted his undivided attention, to be the centre of his world.

“I can see that,” Duessel said, and then Knoll lost track of things, living utterly in the moment. He wasn’t sure when clothes came off, except that then he was naked but for his tunic, his cock bare to Duessel’s ministrations and the bedroom was chilled despite the fire in the grate. Duessel knelt on the floor with a quiet grunt.

“Is your knee bothering you?” Knoll asked, leaning up on one elbow as Duessel pulled his thighs apart, tugged him toward the edge of the bed, his knees hooking over the other man’s shoulders. “You shouldn’t, not at least without a cushion—“

“My knee always bothers me.” Duessel looked up at him, his eyes blown-wide and dark, pressed a brief kiss to the head of Knoll’s cock, made him shudder. “I’ll live. Stop thinking.” He jerked Knoll forward, unbalancing him, and Knoll fell back flat against the bedspread, grabbed Duessel’s hair in one hand and the sheets in the other, and closed his eyes. But—Duessel’s mouth didn’t go where he expected it to, against his cock. No, he nosed lower, and. Spread Knoll’s cheeks with the callused pads of his thumbs, and leaned in and.

“Oh, hell,” Knoll said, and his voice came out shaky as Duessel licked a hot stripe over his entrance. “Oh.” He opened his eyes, stared, unseeing, at the ceiling. He gasped for breath, tightened his fingers in Duessel’s hair. “Duessel,” and he did it again, and then a third time, and then he _groaned_ , hot, against Knoll’s rim.

Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was just Duessel. Either way, Knoll felt a little hysterical, gasping for breath already.

Duessel’s beard scraped over his tender skin and he traced the same path with the hot flat of his tongue to sooth it, and then pressed _into_ Knoll, breaching him, and his world crumbled apart. It wasn’t. It wasn’t _anything_ like fucking the way Knoll was used to it. It was slicker, it was _slower_ , but he felt more open than he ever had, like each time Duessel licked into him he came apart at the seams, and he held onto Duessel for dear life, losing track of time, of where his legs were clenching around the other man’s head, his heels dug into his back, pulling him closer, urging him on. Duessel laughed, _laughed_ , against him in a hot brush of air, and slid one broad, blunt finger into him. It wasn’t even a stretch; Knoll was soaking wet, loose already, relaxed and half out of his mind with pleasure.

And then Duessel crooked his fingers up, still sucking, scraping his teeth over Knoll’s hot-swollen, puffy, aching rim, and dug them into Knoll’s prostate, still tongue-fucking him, and pulled _forward._ Knoll pulled on Duessel’s hair certainly hard enough to hurt as he came, voice cracking in a punched-out sigh, hard enough his vision blacked out. Duessel made him ride it, not letting up, until Knoll felt giddy and shaky and wrung-out, limbs loose with lassitude, wheezing for breath and crying out without meaning to, his composure lost against his will. When it all became too much he tugged on Duessel’s hair, murmuring for him to stop. The shaky haze of orgasm had turned to painful shocks, and the other man pulled away, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand and his bare wrist.

They both breathed.

Knoll didn’t even have the energy to sit up to look at Duessel. He just remained sprawled, boneless, half on the side of his bed, his legs draped over Duessel’s shoulders. “And now I’ll take my boots off,” Duessel said, pulling away, letting Knoll’s heels fall to the floor. The other man’s his voice was hoarse and throaty, and Knoll shuddered, curling his toes in his socks as he thought about _why_ Duessel sounded like that. He lay still as Duessel left him, one hand on his stomach, fingers scraping idly through his own cum, composing himself as he heard Duessel go to the bathroom and rinse his mouth out, watched him as he came back and carefully place his armor on the mannequin, pushed it out to the hall for a squire to come get and oil for the following day, and finally returned.

Duessel stopped at the edge of the bed and put his hands on his hips as he looked down at Knoll in the aftermath of his ecstasy, tunic hiked halfway up his chest, cum on his stomach, legs still akimbo. He was flushed and sweaty, and his hair had come out of its tie, stuck to his face and shoulders. Knoll smiled up at Duessel, almost delirious. “You look beautiful,” Duessel told him, half-smiling. “Some dark thing, come out of the shadows.” Knoll looked down, away from his face, to the other man’s erection, tenting his breeches in what looked like an uncomfortable way.

“Looks like you need a hand.” He said at last, his own voice a little strained.

“Only if you have the energy for it. I mostly wanted to distract you,” Duessel admitted, shrugging a shoulder. “I can deal with it myself.”

“Hmm,” Knoll murmured, scratching at the top of his pubic hair. “No,” he finally decided, and he sat up, leaned on his elbows as he forced his body to work, pushed his hair out of his face with his clean hand. He slid back onto the bed, shucked his tunic over his head and balled it up under his chest to keep from getting semen on the sheets. His tunic needed to be cleaned anyway.

He spread his thighs, still soaking wet, slightly cool, and looked over his shoulder to catch Duessel’s eye. “Oh,” Duessel said, whisper carrying in the room. He stripped the rest of the way, finally removing his boots, and climbed onto the bed, his hands framing Knoll’s waist. He kissed the back of Knoll’s shoulderblade, the curve of his neck, the nape, wrapped one hand around his waist, pulled him over.

The heat of his cock sliding between Knoll’s cheeks was _good_ , and he made a quiet noise, reaching back to hold them together so that Duessel wouldn’t slide back out, rolling up into his thrusts, turning his head over his shoulder so they could kiss. Duessel’s mouth tasted faintly of soap, and he was panting already, rocking forward into Knoll, chasing his own orgasm. Near enough, it seemed, just from eating Knoll out.

The push of his cockhead, the hot, flush skin, the scrape of his pubic hair against Knoll’s oversensitive, swollen rim, was making him shake. Duessel had used _teeth_ earlier, to get him hypersensitive, puffy and empty and wanting, and it was still with him. It hadn’t gone down. Probably wouldn’t for days. Soon enough Knoll could feel himself getting the rest of the way hard, and he leaned back against Duessel’s shoulder. “In me,” he murmured, reaching for the bedside, pulling back the oil. “Oh, get in me.” He _needed_ , after earlier, to be properly filled, after having a taste but not drinking his fill. Duessel’s cock was _thick_ , not necessarily long, and the stretch their first time had left Knoll reeling afterward, open and empty to the point Duessel had fingerfucked him afterward to give him something to hang onto. Now, he was discovering he craved that near-painful stretched, almost as much as he craved pressing Duessel down facefirst into the sheets and spreading his cheeks and sliding home into the heat at the heart of him.

“Sure?” Duessel asked, soothing a mark he’d left on Knoll’s shoulder, kissing the reddened skin, hands feeling over the tender shadows beneath his hipbones, one grasping the base of his cock, squeezing. Knoll shuddered. “Sure,” Duessel answered his own question at that, took the oil, slicked his fingers. He’d only had two in earlier, and Knoll might be loose enough, but he still took his time, getting four fingers up into him, tugging back and up on his burning rim until Knoll rolled him over, plastered on top of the other man, and cried out, grabbing for the hand on the base of his cock, his neck boneless, his head beside Duessel’s on the pillow.

“Oh, please,” Knoll rarely begged, but _something_ had him going, a knot deep inside his chest, beneath his breastbone. He was thinking that if he left Grado, to live out his remaining life in anonymity, to finish the many other things Lyon had left him to do, Duessel wouldn’t come. That if he left, he would probably never see Duessel again. They would die far apart. “Please, Duessel, I—“

“You’re impatient tonight,” Duessel laughed, tugging up and out on his rim again, stretching that poor abused skin, and Knoll, embarrassing as it was, moaned. Duessel pulled his hand back, Knoll to wide-open to close, and Knoll could feel Duessel stroking himself with oil, cock pressed against the small of his back, and he tugged Knoll up until he was arched, and then back down, and. Oh, sinking home. Oh.

He held tight to Duessel’s wrist at the base of his cock with one hand, and with the other, reached for his fingers, twined them together. Their legs were a knot upon the bedspread, their hair tangled, and at the angle they were, Knoll sprawled over his chest, he only had to turn his head so they could kiss, biting Duessel’s lower lip. Duessel’s heels were planted on the mattress for leverage, and he fucked up into Knoll from beneath in short, sure strokes, already near enough to his peak to not waste time on finesse. He pulled Knoll back down into them by the grip on his cock, his other hand holding tight to Knoll’s, flat over his breastbone. Knoll slung one leg over the other man’s so he could rock down against his thigh, savoring the light pressure against his balls.

They were soaked in sweat, Duessel’s chest hair sticking to Knoll’s back, the both of them gasping for breath, and Knoll shut his eyes so he could just _feel_ , cried out when Duessel moved their twined hands to pinch one of his nipples, tugging on it in time with the hand on his cock and his thrusts. He bit down none-too-gently on Knoll’s shoulder, sucked another mark next to the first, and then a third, moving up the side of his neck. “Gorgeous,” Duessel said, lost into the sounds of their fucking, into his own grunts and groans and Knoll’s ragged, broken gasps, “You feel so good inside. You’re like fucking molten lava clenching around my cock. I could fuck you all day.” Knoll clenched down _hard_ without meaning to, biting his lower lip, the pit of his stomach twisting as Duessel sped up.

“I want you to,” Knoll slurred, half-mindless with pleasure. “Your cock is. Oh, it’s perfect.” Duessel huffed his brusque laugh again, and Knoll wished he could see his face clearly, the tension on his brow, the clench in his jaw, the way he bit his lower lip the closer he got. “Come in me,” he said, clenching down against Duessel again, rocking back into his thrusts, tangling his fingers with Duessel’s over his cock, squeezing the base of his head. “I want you to.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Duessel snarled, pinched Knoll’s nipple harder than he normally would have, hard enough that Knoll yelped. His hand on Knoll’s cock stilled as he pushed up and deep, chased the high, hips snapping upward. He fucked in in four short, sharp, thrusts, bottoming out until Knoll felt so full his knees were shaking and he felt the stretch and the pressure up his spine and he cried out again as Duessel tensed, spilling inside him.

He was so close. It almost hurt, how close he was, and he trembled as Duessel slumped beneath him, gasping for breath, his hands slack. “Come here,” he murmured. “Turn around.” Knoll shuddered as he did so, his cock brushing his thighs almost enough to make him come, and Duessel grabbed him by the ass, hauled him closer. “Sit up.”

Knoll figured out what Duessel was doing just as he tugged Knoll over his face, too high to fuck his throat, and spread his cheeks again. “Oh, gods,” Knoll whimpered, whined, shook. “Duessel—“ three fingers back in him, pinching his prostate so hard it hurt, Duessel’s tongue in with them, teeth scraping over Knoll’s too-wide, stretched, _aching_ rim, used and abused and now in beathless pleasurable agony, and he wanted to ride the other man’s face, the wet heat of his mouth. So he did, uncaring, trusting Duessel to take care of him. “Do this again,” Knoll pleaded, thrusting down into the other man’s touch, grabbing the headboard for some kind of balance, his other hand on his cock, squeezing the base of his glans _hard_ , jerking just the head too-fast and too-hard. “Please do this again, every night, I—“

And he came, keening for breath, as Duessel ate him out like he was dying for it, urging him on, over, and up, and into blessed, broken white noise.

 

 

In the dark, Duessel’s breath, hot against the nape of his neck, paused, hitched. The fingers that had been slack against the base of his stomach tightened, shifted, curled with Knoll’s own, their knuckles brushing, knotted. Duessel sighed, nuzzled his nose into the tender fossae at the top of Knoll’s neck, at the base of his skull. “I can tell you’re awake,” he murmured, his voice hoarse and gritty with sleep. “Go to sleep, Knoll.”

Knoll leaned back into the other man, listened to the comforting beating of his heart, echoing back through his own ribcage. Still naked, their bodies were cooled of sweat, and he reveled in the scrape of Duessel’s hair against his skin, the reassuring scent of him, warm and softened in sleep. The tang of armor, sweat, musk. He smelled of combat and the road, and more often than not, of blood. He smelled of _power_ , a raw strength so different from Knoll’s own.

“I think,” Knoll told him, hesitant, the words that he wanted to say struggling and tangling in his mouth in the spaces between his tongue and teeth and soft palate, knotting up into an ugly morass. “I am in love with you.” It was easier, in the dark. He didn’t have to see the changes, the ripples to the future, those words wrought.

Duessel smiled. Knoll could feel it against his skin. He squeezed Knoll’s fingers.

“Remember the day you told me the truth?”

Knoll did. It had been on a battlefield, when he’d been struck by an arrow, and Duessel had paused to help him dress the wound, amidst all the other chaos during the war. It had _hurt_ to say, but Duessel had understood. In ways Natasha, Ephraim, Eirika, hadn’t. He _understood_. He knew what it meant, to be so totally alone. The past dead, the future dying.

Duessel and Lyon. They had been the only two to ever truly understand.

“Yes,” Knoll said.

“Loved you since,” Duessel murmured, into the back of his neck, into the side of his braid.

“Oh,” Knoll said.

And it all slotted together.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr and twitter @jonphaedrus


End file.
